For Wilshire Baptist Church
The doorbell rang on Saturday afternoon before Easter and I looked down from the upstairs window to see two nicely but simply dressed women, one with a satchel and the other with a small stack of papers in her hand. Apparently they rang the doorbell and then stepped back off the porch to wait.
“I’ll get it” I shouted and walked quickly down the stairs to the front door. LeAnn was working in the kitchen and I didn’t want her to drop what she was doing. But more than that, I knew from looking out the window what was waiting and what to do about it.
And I was right: It was two women going door to door on behalf of Jesus and God. On past visits they’ve made a brief statement of faith and offered some literature, but this time they handed me a small folded flyer and pointed to a specific time and date for a talk titled, “How to Cultivate Peace in an Angry World.”
“That’s a timely topic,” I said in total honesty, to which one of the women said, “We think it will be of great interest and help to a lot of people. There’s so much anger, fear and uncertainty in the world.”
I looked at the time and date again and it was the next morning – Easter Sunday. I said, “Oh, this is tomorrow. We’ll be at our church tomorrow.” That was a kinder way of saying, “We’ve got this faith thing covered and we’re not the heathen you might think we are, and so, no, we won’t be coming to the talk tomorrow.” And then I thanked them for stopping and wished them a blessed Easter. I admire what they do, and I usually tell them so but I forgot to do that this time.
The Monday after Easter I saw the flyer in the stack of stuff on the kitchen counter and looked at it again. I looked up their denomination on the Internet and found that “How to Cultivate Peace in an Angry World” was their worldwide focus on Easter weekend.
Thinking about that and our own Easter observance, I realize we are really working toward the same goal and we have Christ as the example to follow. Didn’t Jesus’ ministry focus on cultivating peace? Wasn’t the world he came into angry – as well as fearful, hateful, hungry, hurting? Wasn’t his death on the cross the culmination of that anger, and his resurrection the ultimate gift of peace? Didn’t he return and greet his disciples with the words, “Peace be with you”?
There are many ways to learn and practice passing the peace: Bible studies and sermons, worship and seminars, music and prayers. They all resonate in different ways with different people and they’re all good. But then comes the actual passing of peace, and that requires getting up and getting out. We pass the peace in church and we’re mostly “preaching to the choir” as the old saying goes. We pass the peace in our neighborhoods, workplaces and communities just by treating those we come into contact with compassion, respect and trust.
But to cultivate peace in an angry world, you have to bravely go out into that angry world. That takes faith and courage and not being afraid of who or what is waiting on the other side of a closed door. Those two women had it easy with me, but I can’t imagine what they face sometimes. I pray for their peace and safety as they go.